Fun fact: walking on Lego hurts more than walking on hot coals

Did you know it hurts more to walk over Lego bricks than over broken glass, or hot coals?

It’s possible to walk over hot coals and broken glass because the coals and glass are specially prepared to make it easier to walk on. Coals are carefully heated to be hot, but not too hot. At the right temperature, they’ll release heat very slowly – so as long as people don’t linger on them, it’s possible to walk across without damaging their feet at all. Accidents can happen when the coals are heated too hot or aren’t given enough time to cool down.

Small pieces of broken glass are used for glass walks, and once they’re laid out in a path, they’re pushed down to make the path more compact and the top layer more even. Although there are still sharp edges, the person’s weight is distributed across lots of sharp points, so there’s not enough pressure on any one sharp point to cause injury.

Lego bricks, on the other hand, are made from incredibly hard plastic, which can’t be compacted to make the top layer flatter. Because the sharp corners still stick out of the top layer, this everyday household object can be more painful to walk across than broken glass. Still, if you had to choose, it would likely be easier to walk over a path of Lego bricks rather than put all your body weight on an individual Lego corner!